1.2.1.2- International Capitalism Theory of conflict
This theory captures the historical import of colonialism and
imperialism. According to Hobson (2006), the external drive of western nations
propelled by the Industrial Revolution created numerous platforms for conflict.
The search for raw materials, need to invest surplus capital and search for new
markets
2 Douma, P. (2006). Poverty, Relative Deprivation
and Political Exclusion as Drivers of Violent Conflict in Sub Saharan Africa.
Journal on Science and World Affairs, 2(2), 59-69
9
outside Europe compelled an imperialist pathway as the western
countries desperately sought such markets, raw materials and investment
climates at the expense of the peace and prosperity of the locals in what is
now known as the Global South. This led to colonization, as well as collision
of cultures and civilizations and ultimately conflict. Hyde (2016) in his
«Are colonial-era borders drawn by Europeans holding Africa
back?» reports that African scholars have long maintained that the
national borders in Africa, most of which date back to the period in the late
1800s when European powers divided up most of the continent in a flurry of
diplomatic agreements and colonial wars now known as the «Scramble for
Africa,» are actually one of the biggest sources of its present-day strife
and violence. In his study «The political and economic legacy of
colonialism in the post-independence African States», Bayeh (2015)
shares the same view noting that colonialism has impacted the political and
economic conditions of the contemporary Africa. He argues that
post-independence African political system is characterized by ethnic based
exclusion and marginalization. Moreover, he supports that corrupt behavior of
the contemporary leaders of Africa is also a contribution of the colonial
experience. The author also puts forward that African resources are extensively
exploited by colonizers, thereby rendering Africa economically weak and looser
in its interaction with the global economy. Supporting the same idea,
Ylönen (2009) says that the colonizers constructed the states in Africa
around a small, ruling elite, demarcating borders according to colonial
territorial holdings, not along ethnic communities, and tended to practice the
strategy of 'divide and rule' to minimize local challenges against the colonial
authority. For him, the attempt to create sufficient political order to
maximize the extraction of resources with minimum investment, the colonial
policies encouraged demographic and regional marginalization of state
peripheries and promoted economic, political, and social inequalities and
imbalances.
In another article entitled «The legacy of
colonialism in the contemporary Africa: a cause for intrastate and interstate
conflicts», Bayeh (2015) stresses on the contribution of colonial
legacy in the contemporary African problems. The study show that the arbitrary
colonial division of African borders contributed a lot for the contemporary
African problems. He explained that blind partition of African borders caused
the disintegration of some ethnic groups into different countries and the
merging together of different ethnic groups into some countries. This, in turn,
resulted in several intrastate and interstate conflicts. Rwanda, Nigeria and
Sudan are taken as typical examples for the first case while Kenya-Somalia and
Ethio-Somalia conflicts for the second case.
As for the conflict in Mali, Amadou Sy3 argues that
«to understand the ethnic roots of the conflict, it's useful to go
back to the colonial period. ... At the Berlin Conference of 1884-5,
imperialist European powers carved up North African territory, creating a
variety of artificial territories before forcing the indigenous populations
into labor.... When Mali became independent, you had nomadic tribes [namely the
Tuareg] who were really by nature not residents of one particular region; they
were migrating from one country to another. Thus, in Mali, the Tuareg were
politically excluded, and their nomadic lifestyle
3 Amadou Sy, a senior fellow in the Africa Growth
Initiative at the Brookings Institution.
10
was threatened by the dictates of the post-imperialist
borders.» In his «Mali: Tuareg problem, a baby of French
colonialism», Murava (2016) also argues that the conflict in Mali has
its roots in colonialism. He explains that before the colonial period the
Tuareg controlled the inter-Saharan trade routes and saw themselves as `masters
of the desert'. But during colonial era, the French found Tuareg dominance
incompatible with their goal of expanding the French empire, and therefore
sought to weaken the Tuareg stronghold. Suddenly Tuareg became minorities in
several new states, and in Mali in particular, a minority ruled by the
population they previously had viewed as `inferior' and historically had
directed slave raids towards.
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